Personally, I try to follow commits on php.cvs, bug reports, Change Log, user notes on the online manual.. but I still have the feeling of missing a lot of changes. After a year away from the project, I have _no_ clue what was added, when, and whether it was added to our documentation or not.
With regard to new features, I've kept the NEWS file up to date (as have most other developers) with these changes and although these entries may not be enough for a 3rd party to decipher into manual entries, I can certainly write up the ones with my name by them when the time comes (see note about PHP6). But that's just a question of features, there's also the "unicode semantics quirks". Some functions which act in a perhaps-unexpected manner when used in unicode-semantics mode. These are going to be more difficult to track down, but I'll make an effort to catalog and document the parts I worked on.
I know that you developers are willing to help a lot with it, but that you cannot manage to save the spare time needed to do it the right way.
I admit that my additions, personally, in the past year have been left off the documentation radar, but that's due (mostly) to the fact that these additions have been to PHP6 and (as with PHP5) the lead time on any release is too long to start advertising features in the manual that don't exist (from the perspective of the end user). Where is the documentation team at with regards to when they feel PHP6 features should start appearing in the manual?
That's why I would like to propose a simple/small/timeless change in your CVS commit messages: If you feel that the change need to be documented, place the @doc keyword at the end of your message log entry.
I like that idea. It's a nice clear, consistent flag saying "look here!". I'll use this from now on.
This small @doc tag could _slightly_ improve/optimize/sanitize our work on the documentation. By adding some SQL logging in loginfo.pl, and storing the following: * date: commit date * login: CVS account of the developer * branch: CVS branch * files: Changed files * commit: Commit message before @doc * desc : Optional developer description after @doc We would be able to have an interface displaying a dynamic phpdoc TODO, with some nice features like a search by PHP version, extension, assignee, keywords..
Sounds sexy...
Additionally, we can imagine adding an online help feature on the interface, by setting a �help� flag on some hardly understandable change, to have [EMAIL PROTECTED] notified of our need for enlightenment.
Well, this sounds like it's more suitable for a manual process, but however you'd like... -Sara -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
